Blah-gging - Death on the Rails - The White House & Fox News

For the last couple of weeks it seems that all the gay bloggers have been off terrorizing Las Vegas at NetRoots or buying new refrigerators in Chicago or baking themselves silly at the southernmost point in New Jersey (that would be me).

Aside from the Bus & Truck production of "Hate on Parade" starring Mz. Brown and Mr. Gallagher of NOM, which is packing them in by the 5's, things are pretty slow around here in the cyber-sphere.

The big excitement in my life this week (and the lives of about 60,000 other commuters in NY/NJ) was the unfortunate suicide of a 30 year old woman this past Tuesday who opted for a permanent solution to her problems by throwing herself in front of a southbound AMTRAK Acela train, which was doing 135 miles per hour at the time.  That night my 1 hour commute from New York City to Princeton Junction took nearly 5 hours.  But even at that, I still had a better day than that unfortunate soul had.

But it wouldn't be a good week if I didn't stumble across something that really got my knickers in a twist.  And this is my knicker-twister du jour:

As you may recall, the dean of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas, was recently forced to resign after an outburst of anti-semitism.  The WHCA is now getting ready to give away Helen's former front row seat in the Briefing Room to one of the other senior newsgathering organizations.

And here are their current choices:

1.  NPR
2.  Bloomberg News
3.  Fox News

Needless to say I sent them an e-mail.

"It is my understanding that with the recent departure of Helen Thomas from the press corps, the WHCA is considering assigning her vacant seat to one of three organizations, Bloomberg News, Fox News or NPR.


I would like to urge you to NOT consider Fox News for this prestigious seat. I have no problem with either NPR or Bloomberg, but it is my opinion that Fox is not a serious news gathering organization but, rather, serves but one purpose, that being to generate profits for it's parent, News Corp, by callously agitating the American political right.

Please do not open yourselves to ridicule and dishonor by giving this seat to Fox.

Thank you."

Google "White House Correspondent's Association" and send them an e-mail expressing your views.

Mark Twain, the New York Times and American Imperialism

Mark Twain knew all about being a boy in the early 19th century, growing up along the banks of the mighty Mississippi River.

Apparently he also knew a thing or two about American imperialism.

He died 100 years ago this past April 22. Now comes word that a large part of his "private" autobiography, held in confidence for the hundred years following his death, will be published this fall. In it, so rumor goes, he "names names" and calls a spade a spade regarding our American propensity for foreign military adventurism. It’s said, shockingly, that he actually referred to our armed forces as "uniformed assassins." We'll all have to wait until November to get the all deets on that.

Meanwhile, though, we can content ourselves with reading recently published secret documents posted first on Wiki Leaks and then again yesterday, in great analytic detail, in the New York Times -- documents detailing the horrors and failures of our 9 year war in Afghanistan.

The United States of America has involved itself in military actions, foreign and domestic, too many times to enumerate here.  But you can check it out for yourself at the web site of Zoltan Grossman, a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington by clicking on his web-page, Here.

It is naive of us to believe that our foreign excursions are excusable because they bring goodness and democracy to other nations. We're not terribly interested in that, when our strategic interests are really to annoy some foreign power and to steal whatever assets we can lay our hands on... assets which will further enrich the entrenched military-industrial complex here at home.

Winston Churchill once remarked that we Americans "can be counted upon to always do the right thing ... once we've exhausted every other possibility".

It's a lovely thought, but untrue.

In fact, we only do the "right thing" once we’ve been shamed into it (we were happy to sit by while England was visciously attacked by Germany and, in fact, didn't get off our asses to really help the English until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor). Our natural inclination is to do the wrong thing, time and time again. And by wrong I mean "that thing which will embarrassingly enrich a handful of ruthless plutocrats who have zero interest in either democracy or their fellow men."

It is those same plutocrats who, by virtue of their self-centered ruthlessness, cause wars which must then be fought and won by the flower of our youth, millions of young men and women who have no vested financial interest in the outcome of the war but who are conned into believing that it is their patriotic duty to un-do the damage done by handfuls of hateful old men and women who then sit back at home and reap the profits generated by our sons’ and daughters’ deaths overseas.

And yes, I do love my country. But we have hocked our future to the military and industry to the tune of trillions of dollars. Dollars we should’ve spent making America a paradise on earth instead of a bankrupt nation of deluded fools who haven't got a pot to piss in nor a window to throw it out.